This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on December 14, 2015.

GEORGE TOWN: The Penang government, seeking to fulfil its promise to declassify land reclamation agreements, has hit a snag as there are confidentiality clauses in the contracts inked by the previous Barisan Nasional (BN) administration.

Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said the state legal adviser was studying the agreements to see how to get around the confidentiality clauses.

He said if nothing could be done about them, his administration would only declassify the documents for land reclamation approved by the Pakatan Harapan state government. 

“There are such clauses in the old agreements. I cannot remember now how many are with confidentiality clauses,” he told reporters yesterday morning at the Occupy Beach Street event. “The Seri Tanjung Pinang 2 has a confidentiality clause. We are trying to get around it.” 

“Worst comes to worst, we will only declassify ours, the 60 acres (24.28ha) we approved, and not the ones signed during the Barisan Nasional administration,” he said.

It was reported that under the BN, the state government approved the reclamation of a total of 1,312ha while the current DAP-led government had approved 60 acres in Bayan Mutiara and Bayan Bay since taking over in 2008.

The state executive council last Wednesday approved Guan Eng’s proposal to declassify the land reclamation agreements signed by the previous and present administrations, following a call by civil society coalition Penang Forum for details of the agreements.

The issue with land reclamation in Penang escalated from a recent motion tabled at the state legislative assembly by BN Pulau Betong assemblyman Muhamad Farid Saad.

He had asked the House to compel the government to subject all land reclamation projects to public hearings and to put on hold new land reclamation projects until oceanic and environmental impact studies had been done. — The Malaysian Insider